Thoughts from the Bullpen: Restrictions without enforcement

December 08, 2010|By Craig Sherwood

Reading the story recently about the residents of Cordova Street wanting more restrictions to relieve their problems with overflow parking from Porto's Bakery, I was wondering if they really think having more rules is going to actually fix the situation.

If you go to the city's website and pull up the municipal code, you are going to find rules for everything. How high your fence can be, how many animals you can have (and the type), what kind of business can be where, and so on.

It's great to pass all of these laws and ordinances, but the problem is, who is going to enforce them? Are authorities even going to pay attention to them unless there is something that comes up?

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For you people on Cordova, I submit this. I live in an area of Burbank that has a ton of traffic restrictions — in fact, there is an entire neighborhood plan in place. Streets in my area were sealed on one side and changed to one-way only on others. Strict resident-only parking was put in until 8 p.m. on one of the streets, and then there were the speed bumps.

There are speed bumps everywhere. They put in speed bumps between stop signs that are about 100 yards apart. Who can speed within 100 yards anyway? I would love to see all the cars that have developed suspension problems over the years in this small Burbank neighborhood.

So all of these rules and regulations are in place, and guess what? On my street cars constantly go through the one-way sign — the wrong way. The same goes for other streets in the area.

Parking in the 100 block of North Rose Street is restricted to residents only until 8 p.m. on weeknights, but on any Friday night the block is completely parked up with people who want to go to Bob's.

I called one night and asked for a parking control officer and was told none were working on a Friday night at that time, and they could send a patrol officer out. I declined for the simple reason that I want patrol officers on the street catching real criminals and not spending an hour writing 20 parking tickets. Maybe the residents of Rose Street can hire an overtime parking control officer to enforce their parking rules and even keep some of the fines to pay for the officer.